An Indio gas station will offer $1.99 gas from 1 to 4 p.m. today, Jan. 22, as part of a signature drive for a ballot measure that would repeal California’s recent 12-cents-a-gallon gas tax increase.

Regular, unleaded gas will be sold for $1.99 a gallon at the Arco gas station at 42334 Jefferson St. Gas station owner Nachhattar Chandi is offering the cheap gas as a lure to gather signatures to put the gas-tax repeal on the November ballot.

“If you eliminate the massive taxes and fees imposed by the politicians on California’s gas, filling up for $1.99 should happen every day,” Reform California chairman and Gas Tax Repeal Initiative leader Carl DeMaio said in a news release.

“We’re appreciative that the owner of these gas stations is doing this and we encourage voters to fill up not only their tanks but help us fill up the signature blocks on the Gas Tax Repeal petitions that we will have onsite.”

You don’t have to sign the petition to get the cheap gas. Drivers also can sign the petition at various Chandi-owned Arco stations in Indio, Cathedral City and Palm Desert.

California’s gas tax rose as part of a $52.4 billion transportation funding package passed by the Legislature last year. Supporters say the state’s gas tax wasn’t keeping up with inflation and drivers will save hundreds of dollars in car repairs with the fixes paid for by the transportation bill.

The repeal ballot measure already has more than 400,000 signatures, organizers said. About 584,000 voter signatures are needed to qualify the measure for the ballot.

Jeff Horseman got into journalism because he liked to write and stunk at math. He grew up in Vermont and he honed his interviewing skills as a supermarket cashier by asking Bernie Sanders “Paper or plastic?” After graduating from Syracuse University in 1999, Jeff began his journalistic odyssey at The Watertown Daily Times in upstate New York, where he impressed then-U.S. Senate candidate Hillary Clinton so much she called him “John” at the end of an interview. From there, he went to Annapolis, Maryland, where he covered city, county and state government at The Capital newspaper before love and the quest for snowless winters took him in 2007 to Southern California, where he started out covering Temecula for The Press-Enterprise. Today, Jeff writes about Riverside County government and regional politics. Along the way, Jeff has covered wildfires, a tropical storm, 9/11 and the Dec. 2 terror attack in San Bernardino. If you have a question or story idea about politics or the inner workings of government, please let Jeff know. He’ll do his best to answer, even if it involves a little math.